Slashdot Mirror
Wikileaks Calls For Global Boycott Against eNom
souls writes "The folks at Wikileaks are calling for a boycott against eNom, Inc., one of the top internet domain registrars, which WikiLeaks claims is involved in systematic domain censoring. On Feb 28th eNom shut down wikileaks.info, one of the many Wikileaks mirrors held by a volunteer as a side-effect of the court proceedings around wikileaks.org. In addition, eNom was the registrar that shut off access to a Spanish travel agent who showed up on a US Treasury watch list. Wikileaks calls for a 'global boycott of eNom and its parent Demand Media, its owners, executives and their affiliated companies, interests and holdings, to make clear such behavior can and will not be tolerated within the boundaries of the Internet and its global community.'"
GoDaddy is another bad registrar, and has been mentioned on Slashdot many times, including here and here. I'm assuming Dynadot should also be boycotted.
Perhaps it doesn't fit with what the wikileaks people intended when they started it, but I wish that wikileaks would let/encourage others to fight using their facts (however much is fact) rather than wikileaks themselves doing it. Somehow their active stance makes me more wary of the information on the site.
i have dozens of websites registered thru enom
are there any other registrars that are not "evil"?
I know the concept of the internet being non-centralized, and with no real authority to oversee it, which is one of its strengths.
However, it stinks at times like these, when you want an authority to go to to punish actions for a registrar (an d I know some registrars have been shut down, but for more egregious actions).
However, in a case like this, where the "people" of the internet have felt wronged because a company went against the philosophies of the internet, Is there any other course of action besides a boycott (which may or may not be effective due to the terms of registrations, and companies going with what they think is the best price, not necessarily the best price and the right philosophy).
If there is no other course of action, what is the best way to get this out there (besides Slashdot, etc)?
It's not all that complicated. The horror stories you see here and there are the exception, not the rule.
I don't have any domains registered with eNom, so I'm not sure of the specific procedures for them, but the gist of it is:
* Sign in to your current registrar
* Make sure your email address with them is valid (there will be confirmation steps using it!)
* Unlock your domains (many registrars have "locking" features to prevent others from stealing your domains, plus to make it a little trickier for you to leave
* You might as well disable automatic renewals as well (if they have them), just in case
* Go to your new registrar and click through to "transfer" your domain, and pay for it. Normally they'll honor your existing expiration date (even if it's a couple of years away) and add your new years to the end of that.
* Make sure you set up the domain at the new registrar with the correct nameservers for your host, and you won't have any downtime because of the switch.
* The next steps will often take a few days -- new registrar will submit request to old registrar, who will email you for confirmation (and you'll have to click through to provide that)... possibly multiple confirmations... and then the domain will be transferred, and you're done.
Anyone want to provide details for eNom, or add anything I forgot?
I can also mention that most of my domains are currently hosted with GoDaddy -- who I'm not particularly fond of, but they're cheap and haven't screwed me over personally. Suggestions for alternatives are welcome... it's something I haven't researched in a while.
standard procedure for which to handle domain shut down requests.
a take down request should be specific and start with a request to remove the offending material, not the whole site.
It could be done with laws but would need to be done in any country hosting.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but this is a hosting site issue, not a domain registry issue (or it shouldn't be a domain registry issue).
Registry is like an ID, messing with an ID is like identity theft or other wrongful manipulation of a persons ID. There should already be laws for this.
Anyways, there is the possibility to organize a standards group on the issue just as there is the OSI, linuxs standard base ,
etc.. and openly rate and publish hosting policies compliance level and even registry policies if that is indeed an issue.
There should also be recourse against those who violate. Or at least a bad mark on the open rating report.
Rather than cry about eNOM's vulnerability to the US Justice system, Wikileaks should be protecting their domain name with the same care as they do their content.
The court ordered that wikileaks.ORG be shut off. The Wikileaks people argue that eNom incorrectly interpreted the temporary restraining order to also apply to wikileaks.INFO. Additionally, eNom kept the domain out of commission even after the original temporary restraining order had been dissolved and the wikileaks.org domain had been restored.
Never mistake "can" for "should".
The successful Geek boycott seems to belong in the same Fantasyland where "Microsoft is dying" and "This is the Year of Linux on the desktop."
Try https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
What power has law where only money rules.
Are they really that stupid? No, Wikileaks is asking to boycott a registrar that overzealously interprets a court order, which orders the shutdown of one domain. Said domain wasn't even registered with the registrar, so the court order wasn't even affecting the registrar.
But instead of just ignoring a paper that didn't matter to them, they shut down a different domain, which wasn't mentioned in the court order at all.
I would clearly recommend www.gandi.net as well. I have been using them for years exactly due to them declaring I am the owner of my domain and in charge of my domain, not them unlike most other registrars. The prices have increased over the last couple of years - they have been charging 12 Euro, which when I started clearly was among the best prices in the marked, but with the current strong Euro, you will be aware of the difference. The are now allowing payment in USD which is only $15/year now (thought the strong Euro would have cased higher dollar price). That said - I have used many registrars and I for one will select Gandi over the rest also for other reasons: I feel they are providing a much better overall experience than the rest. I once tried Godaddy as it was a bit cheaper than Gandi, and it seemed like a good provider... Not that I have ever had a problem such as this with them, but the services of Gandi are worth the difference for me, and Gandi do not spam me, or keep sending as much "renew your information" type messages and so on.
Some of the benefits I am using:
You are the owner of the domain name! : See https://www.gandi.net/contracts Section 1
Gandi includes DNS in its default service so you can edit directions of domains and sub domains without also paying for hosting!
Gandi allows you without hosting to have 5 mail boxes with 1GB mailbox space - again without paying additional for hosting!
Gandi also allow you to add wildcard mailbox aliasing og 1000 e-mail addresses, and may relay the mail to external mailboxes.